ANNOUNCEMENT

Saturday Morning Physics announces spring schedule

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Saturday Morning Physics, the University of Michigan series
of multimedia science lectures for general audiences, opens its spring season
on Feb. 14.

Every week for seven weeks, more than 300 people, from middle school students
to retirees, will give up part of their weekend to listen to U-M scientists
describe their cutting edge research in easy-to-understand, non-technical terms.
Each talk is illustrated with multimedia technology and live demonstrations.

The lectures will be held Saturdays, 10:30-11:30 a.m., in 170 Dennison Building,
501 East University, on the U-M's Central Campus. The lectures are free and
open to the public. Coffee and refreshments will be served. High school students
are especially encouraged to attend, but those of all ages are welcome.

The series is sponsored by the Department of Physics and donations from the
public.

Talks scheduled for the spring series are:

–Feb. 14: "Magnificent Mars!" Ken
Croswell, astronomer and author. The planet Mars has long offered the prospect
of another living world in the solar system. With an armada of spacecraft scrutinizing
the red planet as never before, Croswell will present the best color images
of Mars and describe the planet from pole to pole, exploring Martian geology,
the Martian atmosphere, Martian volcanoes, and Martian water, all organized
around the four great elements of Mars: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. He will
introduce volcanoes over twice as tall as Mount Everest, canyons that could
stretch from Ohio to California, and floods of water far greater than any known
on Earth. Billions of years ago, on a world warmer and wetter, Mars may have
given rise to life whose fossils await discovery today.

The effects of static electricity have been known for more than 2,000 years,
but a careful cataloging of the effects and theoretical understanding did not
occur until the nineteenth century. The first lecture will begin with the basic
ideas of electricity and describe Faraday's unification of electricities. Campbell
will then develop the ideas of voltage, current and electric field. He will
demonstrate the effects and concepts using a combination of antique equipment
similar to what was used in the nineteenth century and modern equipment, such
as Tesla coils.

Naturally occurring magnets, lodestones, were used in antiquity to aid navigation
by indicating direction. While it may not seem obvious that the magnets used
to hold our shopping lists on the refrigerator door are related to the static
electricity shocks that we get on cold winter days, an ingenious set of experiments
performed in the nineteenth century showed that they were deeply connected.
These experiments lead to the successful unification of electricity and magnetism
by James Clerk Maxwell in 1873. Campbell will explain and demonstrate the effects
of magnets, and the interconnection between electricity and magnetism.

The unification of electricity and magnetism brought with it two surprises.
The first was the prediction of electromagnetic waves, which lead to both new
understandings and new inventions. The second was the theory of special relativity,
although it would be another 25 years before this was understood. Campbell
will demonstrate the properties of electromagnetic waves with a model of Hertz's
generator as well as modern equipment. He will also demonstrate the wave nature
of light. He will explain one of the effects of special relative time dilation
by using light. Finally, he will show us how the historical development of
the theory of electricity and magnetism has parallels to our current efforts
to unify gravity and quantum mechanics.

String theory is a modern attempt at unifying two of the pillars of twentieth
century physics—quantum field theory and general relativity. These two theories
have been experimentally tested and make robust predictions. They are, however,
inconsistent with each other. Black holes are classical solutions of general
relativity that have challenged our quantum intuition for more than thirty
years. Pando Zayas will describe how string theory unifies field theory and
general relativity. This may solve some of the long-standing puzzles related
to black holes.

Edwin Hubble discovered in the 1930's that our universe is dynamic, expanding
away from a birth about 14 billion years ago. Ever since, scientists have wondered
about its destiny. Would the expansion slow to a halt and then collapse or
would the expansion continue forever, slowed weakly by the gravity of the matter
within? Now it appears that a mysterious dark energy has taken over the universe
and is accelerating its expansion, driving distant galaxies out of our observable
universe. Tarl é will explore the experimental evidence for the existence
of this dark energy and examine some of the possible explanations of its nature.

Recent experiments show that our universe is expanding at an ever-increasing
rate, driven by a mysterious dark energy. To determine what dark energy is
as opposed to that it is present will require a new generation of experiments
of unprecedented precision. Scientists from around the globe are now planning
for a SuperNova/Acceleration Probe (SNAP), a new type of space telescope that
will observe thousands of supernova explosions to determine the nature of the
dark energy. Tarl é will explore how scientists go about designing a
precision cosmological experiment such as SNAP and examine its prospects for
uncovering the true identity of the major component of our universe.

Selected telecasts of past lectures will be available on U-M educational access
TV (UMTV) and Comcast cable channel 22 in the Ann Arbor area. The schedule
is on the UMTV Web site. Select past lectures also continue to be telecast
on the city of Ann Arbor Community Television Network's (CTN) CitiTV cable
channel 19.